McDonald's Burgers Aren't the Only Ones That Don't Rot

Sally Davies's claim
that McDonald's hamburgers simply don't decompose has been kicking around for six months. Over that span she
observed a Happy Meal (an endangered species) in her kitchen that didn't mold, rot or shrink and she posted the pictures to prove it. Media attention piled on and, naturally, McDonald's spokespeople got very testy—heatedly insisting
that, yes, their patties do actually mold. The truth, according to one
kitchen scientist, is that both of these claims are suspect.

"Neither a McDonald's burger nor a regular home-made burger will rot given certain specific conditions," argues J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
at Seriouseats.com, who undertook an experiment to empirically test
Davies claim with a control burger and a McDonald's patty. After several
weeks of tinkering (pictures, graphs and multiple hypotheses included
on the site), the experimenter concluded:

Turns out that not
only did the regular McDonald's burgers not rot, but the home-ground
burgers did not rot either. Samples one through five had shrunk a bit
(especially the beef patties), but they showed no signs of
decomposition. What does this mean? It means that there's nothing that
strange about a McDonald's burger not rotting. Any burger of the same
shape will act the same way.

Why, you may ask, did these burgers not immediately begin to decompose?

The
burger doesn't rot because it's small size and relatively large surface
area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there's no
mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much
sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things
along as well. It's not really surprising. Humans have known about this
phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef
jerky is made?

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